


As Angels Do

by therev



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-02 08:18:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therev/pseuds/therev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is maybe Cas's last night on Earth. Dean does not take him to a brothel. Eschatology and hand-holding ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Angels Do

**Author's Note:**

> Re-telling a scene during 5.03.

Dean always figured that the way Cas smells, when Dean is close enough to smell him, isn't so much Cas as Jimmy, a remnant of the vessel that Castiel keeps replacing with every regeneration, every spontaneous angelic miracle bath that keeps the body clean and the suit from wrinkling any more than it had been that first day, as if recreating that smell, of laundry detergent and aftershave and the scent of skin that lingers beneath, is just as important as keeping Jimmy's heart beating and all his limbs attached in the right places, in the same way that Jimmy will never need a haircut or a shave so long as Castiel is in residence, and how that one button on his coat, second from the top, its thread loose, will never be lost and not replaced, loose thread and all.

But since Cas had, what? Fallen? Dean doesn't know what else to call it. Since then, Cas has been different. Smelled a little different. Like someone (or something) else. More a product of his environment and actions. The aftershave has faded and the coat is dusty and his trousers are wrinkled and sometimes the breeze he rides in on smells like a damp city street, Chicago maybe, food and rain, or like Bobby's, old books and whiskey. That was when Dean realized it was the clinging scent of whatever place Cas had been. Sometimes it's sweet, green. Flowers and grass fields. Sometimes sharp and antiseptic, cold steel and starched sheets.Too often there is smoke and copper, char and death and blood. Dean doesn't like to imagine where he is coming from when he smells like that.

Now it's a perfume Dean's never smelled except for something close to it in some head shop, and sun-warmed canvas, hot, dry sand, like driving through Arizona in dead summer, if Arizona were the Holy Land. It's stronger when Cas steps closer, places a bottle on the table between them, tells Dean it's a very special oil, doesn't flinch when Dean asks if this time tomorrow he'll be dead.

"Last night on earth," Dean says, crosses the room to where Cas had appeared and the perfume is overwhelming but Cas can't see him when he asks, "got any plans?"

"I thought I'd just sit here quietly."

That sounds about right, Dean thinks, even if it's not what he'd do. Or hell, maybe it is. Maybe it's all anyone could really do.

"C'mon, really? No booze, women?"

There's a flicker of something in Cas then, as he turns to regard Dean, and it's on the tip of Dean's tongue to say something about righting wrongs and the shame of chastity in the face of rebellion and oblivion, but something else in Cas's gaze stops him even as Cas repeats himself.

"I'd like to sit here quietly, Dean. With you."

"With me?"

"With you."

The room seems suddenly brighter than it had been, though Dean knows the moonlight hasn't changed and there's not a flicker of power left in the fixtures of the abandoned house, but the flush in his face feels too obvious, even with Cas's back to him, shoulders rounded, posture slack, hands palm up in his lap. There's sand in Cas's shoes. Jimmy's shoes. It glints from between the laces.

"I didn't necessarily mean this quietly," Cas says after a while when Dean hasn't moved or spoken, "but it is sufficient."

"I'm not really sure what to say, man," Dean says, casually as possible, scuffing over to sit opposite Cas who is looking out the window, the moonlight full on his face, and Dean suddenly feels very insignificant. "I'm not exactly prize-at-the-bottom-of-the-box material, you know."

"Dean," Cas says, looking at Dean now and Dean is determined not to look away.

"I know. Keep my opinions to myself."

There's no clock on the wall to tick away the seconds, to measure the silence that Dean imagines only he feels as awkward. The smell of the perfume has faded and the scent of the house is heavy around them. Dust and mold, age and emptiness.

"Alright," Dean says when he can no longer say nothing. "How about a few hands of poker?"

"If you'd like. Although I don't know how to play."

Dean shrugs. "I haven't got any cards anyway."

There's a noise outside, a car rumbling past on the dirt drive. The room goes bright from headlights, then dimmer than before. Dean pulls a lighter from his pocket, opens and closes it. Opens and closes it.

"What do you guys do for kicks, anyway. Angels. When you're not at war or dicking with human lives."

Cas shifts in his seat, brows all concentration, watching Dean's hand then Dean's face and back.

"We've never interfered much before. Even now we do not dick with more lives than necessary. I had not spoken to a human for nearly a hundred years before I spoke to Jimmy. A few of us are more involved than others, mostly the Watchers, but they are fallen." Something dark, a shadow real or imagined, passes over Cas's features and he looks away.

"Watchers. That sounds vaguely hunt-worthy."

"They walk among you. You would not know them as angels."

"Like Anna."

"They live human lives. Choose partners, have children, pay taxes. They are evil only in their willful disobedience."

"Angel babies?"

"Human babies. Their children would have souls."

"Angels don't?"

"No."

"So when you're gone--"

"We are gone."

Dean stands, crosses the room to a cooler, boots noisy on the dirty floor, and pulls out two beers. Cas may not want it but Dean needs one.

"You know," Dean says, sits down again after Cas accepts the bottle with a quiet thanks. "It's funny," it isn't funny, "that blows Sammy's theory dead out of the water."

"What theory is that?"

"That you're like, my--our guardian angel. That you've been watching over us all this time. From scraped knees and a dead mom all the way up."

"I haven't."

"That's what I told him."

"I've been there. I've seen the night your mother died."

Dean shifts forward but Cas doesn't blink. "You what?"

"I've been there. In the same way that I sent you back, before your parents were married. I couldn't change it, you know that." He says this as if Dean might protest that in fact he doesn't know. "But I've been. I've also seen the night that Sam left for school, and the first time your father let you drive the Impala, and the day that he died--"

"Alright. So you're not a guardian angel, you're a creepy time stalker."

"I was curious. Call it research."

"Yeah, well next time just ask."

"What was it like the day your father died, Dean?"

"None of your fucking business, that's what."

Cas smiles, he goddamn smiles, small and smug and Dean should want to hit him in it, but he gets it, he does.

"Yeah," Dean says, "so I'm not an open book but neither are you."

Cas's smile actually goes a little wider before it fades, then he stands and to Dean's great surprise, removes his overcoat and Jimmy's jacket beneath, and when he turns to drape these over the chairback, Dean notices that old scent, and the square shape of what must be Jimmy's wallet in the back pocket of his slacks, endlessly regenerated. It probably still has Jimmy's ID and credit cards, and the same number of bills, perfect down to last crease.

"I'll tell you anything you'd like to know," Cas says when he sits again, looking smaller in just the white shirt and tie and watching Dean expectantly, hands spread on the tabletop, palms up, waiting.

"I don't..." Dean begins, "I mean, I don't really... this is your night, Cas. What do you want to say?"

Cas considers this, considers Dean, as if he is surprised to be asked. As if Dean already knows the answer.

"I'd like to tell you about my brother," he says at last. "I'd like to tell you about Michael."

It's not what Dean expected and even the name sets his teeth on edge now, but he downs the last of his beer, reaches for Cas's, untouched, and says very carefully, cautiously, "okay."

"Michael," Cas begins, looking out the window as if to summon his brother by name, "Michael might have been the first of us, if there was a first. It's not the sort of thing one asks, but if there were any before him there are none before him now. He is our prince. His name means "who is close to God", only it's more a question than a comparison, for he is humble first of all. I know. I know. You can laugh because you don't know him, because you think it is his pride that has set him on this path, to seek you out and destroy you and this world and to take on Lucifer, to bring wrath and destruction in the name of paradise. But you don't know him. He is a warrior, a protector, for the host as well as humans, against all of God's enemies and the enemies of his people, for they are many and they are one." Cas pauses, leans forward, closer to Dean across the table as his words become more urgent. "But he is obedient and absolute. He will act as commanded, as it is written. He will not question. It is not in him to fall. And when he weighs souls on the day of judgement there will be no leeway, no mercy. Michael, as you might say, does not grade on a curve."

Dean's mouth has gone dry in spite of the beer. "Why are you telling me this?"

Cas shrugs. "I wanted you to know. I will do all that I can to stop him, but he is still my brother. It is still in me to want to defend him."

"I guess I can understand that."

"Then Sam is lucky to have you."

"Yeah, well. It takes two to jump-start the apocalypse, apparently."

Movement catches Dean's eye as Cas's hand slides further across the table, palm up, and Dean backs away as if it were a snake.

"Take my hand, Dean."

"What is this, some kind of angelic palm reading?"

"No."

"Well thanks but no thanks, Madame Zora."

Cas doesn't look hurt and neither does he pull his hand away. "Take my hand, Dean," he says again.

"Are we going somewhere?"

"No."

Jimmy's hand is Cas-warm, almost hot, the only way Dean's ever felt him, palm soft from years of selling radio ad time and holding his wife and his daughter and not fighting a war for humanity.

"Nothing's happening," Dean says after a while.

"It is easy to see why you are the vessel," Cas says, ignoring Dean's comment. "He is beautiful, too."

"C'mon, man. You can't just say stuff like that when you're holding another man's hand."

"My last night on earth, Dean. I can say anything I like."

"So, what, hot angels get hot vessels?"

"Don't be dense. I don't mean your face."

The room is too bright again and too warm and Cas just keeps staring and he'd pull away but where's the harm, really. Sometimes it's nice, having something to hold on to.

"We should prepare," Cas says after a while, after longer than Dean realizes, and when Cas pulls away Dean is sorry it wasn't longer.

They set a trap for Raphael, a circle of odorless oil on the dusty floor and before dawn the walls will dance with electricity and holy fire and Cas will still be alive. They'll leave Cas's brother to wait for the flames to die and the air will smell of rain and ozone and maybe something more powerful Dean can't place. They'll head out, out of Maine, out of reach of Raphael (if that's even possible), out of the storm, and not long after Dean will be alone in the car, nothing and no one riding shotgun but the displaced air in the shape of an angel, and Dean will shake his head and rub his face tiredly, and on his palm he will find a perfume that he will never again smell in his lifetime, and the familiar whisper of sun-warm skin.


End file.
